Lola and Bear - Part 2

Here is what happened the second time Lola and Bear met.

When we get to my dad's house everybody is excited.  Lola can't wait to see her Otis and my dad, and Otis is excited to see me (and kind of excited to see Lola).  And now add Bear into the mix, who is excited because there is a new person and dog.  We knew from the get go, that we both needed to watch Lola and Bear closely.  We did not want anything going on. We let them smell each other and could tell immediately, that they were both acting uneasy.  (My dad and I both know Lola's queues and could tell she was uneasy.  Which is not a normal thing for her)

We finally realized Otis was not helping the situation.  (Poor Otis, he is stuck in the middle.)  He was somewhat excited about what was going on and that seemed to make Bear and Lola more excited.  We moved Otis inside to see what would happen. Lola and Bear sniffed each and then just left each other alone.  One step in the right direction.  Or so we thought.

Later, Lola and Otis were chasing the ball.  They both love this.  And while we were throwing the ball, Bear started getting excited.  He started getting into the mix.  As he was doing this, we realized he was very uneasy about Lola and Otis playing.  And it got to the point where started going after Lola in an aggressive manner, and we had to separate them. Bear seems to think that the playing is aggressive and reacts as it is an attack of some sort.

After this happened, we decided that we needed to try something different.  So we decided to take them for a walk together.  This actually went really well.  They would walk right next to each, bump in to each other, and even have there noses touching while they were smelling things on the ground.  And there were no problems.  And neither one was nervous.  Both were very happy to be on a walk.

Going forward, we will keep working on getting these two more comfortable with each other.  We think walks are a good way to start and work from there.  But we know it it will be an on going process.